


settle into place

by meanderingsoul



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Gentleness, Healing, Intimacy, Introspection, Kissing, Old Friends, Past Relationship(s), Roughhousing, Sleeping Together, Slow Burn, familiarity, physical affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 00:10:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12047217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: They’d settled into this finally after they'd made it back, after months in that place, settled back together just like they’d done before after long times spent apart. They were just a little,closertogether now.It was time for what came next, and they’d settled together easily, sure, but it wasn’t 'settling'. Nothing between them hadeverbeen settling.





	settle into place

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in some nebulous time after the season 4 finale with everyone back on earth, but there are no real spoilers for anything.

 

They’d settled into this finally after they made it back, after months in that place, settled back together just like they’d done before after long times spent apart. They were just a little,  _closer_ together now.

Phil wasn’t used to it yet. Not really.

Making the change had been scary honestly, taking on that _maybe_ that they’d both set aside in favor of other needs so many years ago. But, their lives were in a different place now. They’d lost so many friends, lost both spouse and lover. Stability. Even the damned ground under their feet for a while there. If they were ever going to do this, make a move, it was time, time for what came next..

And they’d settled together easily sure, but it wasn’t 'settling'. Nothing between them had _ever_ been settling. Not the friendship or trust or shared youthful idiocy. Every single shared mission and boring briefing and hospital visit. Phil had so few regrets when it came to them.

So it wasn’t 'settling', but it wasn’t romance and passion either. There wasn’t that thrill that came with new love. They’d both had that and lost it, knew the differences through painful trial and error. They weren’t ‘in love’ like that all of a sudden. Phil had seen her, back when May had first met Andrew, that almost bewildered delight she’d walked around with for a while. And he’d been so happy to see her like that; she'd had that coming to her in life. He remembered how it had felt with Audrey and with Rosalind, entirely different as both times had been, sweetness and vigor and captivation. This new thing between them wasn’t that.

But then, he’d already loved May for about 30 years now. That had never and would never change. They had so much familiarity, so much history. He knew how to make her tea. He knew how she moved when she was hiding an injury, how to get that stubborn cramp out of her back with his elbow in under a minute, the way those particular muscles sometimes locked because of a gnarly incident with a steel-toed boot back when they’d both been level twos. And Phil knew she knew him in all the same ways, old injuries and new fears. That this felt a bit more like comfort and warmth than thrill only made sense.

It was the kissing that really threw him.

Honestly, they’d had sex before. More than once.  Sure, it’d been literal decades since the last time, but there’d been more than a few shared handjobs throughout their years as trainees, half drunk on sleep deprivation and stress or sometimes even actual alcohol. And then that time when they were both level twos, after the first time he’d let himself be captured and interrogated to retrieve information and May couldn’t sleep when it was all over. And that one Halloween party. And that first op where they’d been sent in as a ‘couple’ for their cover. Yeah, maybe he’d been overcautious to the point of annoying her that time, but the hesitation had been _intentional_ whatever May said. They'd been apart for a few months and Phil hadn't wanted to act on assumption. 

They knew each other.

But _kissing_ , lips pressed together without scoping the place when they turned or rushing or worrying about overstepping the nebulous boundary that existed for best friend you’ve ever had and past occasional fuckbuddy… it was new and it was _wonderful_.

It was wonderful to bend down to meet her mouth, have her lean back against his arm, to run the fingers that could still feel texture through her smooth hair, feel her breathing and breathe in against her neck. Gunpowder, jasmine and leather, salt and crisp air. It felt like relief every time, like a sigh, all his muscles turning liquid.

And May leaned into him, every time without hesitation, leaned her skull back against his palm, the flats of her forearms against his chest, let him hold her close with closed eyes and softly open mouth. She let him take her weight.  

May had never been especially demonstrative with anybody, but she’d always done most of her talking with the little gestures, little motions and moments you had to be willing to watch for. Watching her fight her way out of that silent, still, internal prison she’d built for herself after so long lost inside had _ached_ , even when he’d already known for sure there was no way he could really help her. She’d cried into his chest for so long in Bahrain he’d been genuinely scared she wasn’t going to stop on her own. Then the next time he’d tried to touch her in that hospital she’d flinched back from him so violently she’d torn stitches.

When May had asked to see the scar it was the first time she’d touched him in over five years. When she’d reached out to hug him after Maveth it had been their first in seven.

That she’d lean on him now after all the things that had happened, that she could still trust him like that, it meant _everything_.

Kissing as normalcy, as an easy exchange wasn’t the only change, just the one Phil found his mind kept catching on like a record scratch. Some of this was all the things they got _back_.

May started stealing his almost-laundry for pajamas again. She’d done that all through the academy and their first couple of years with Shield and somehow it had still taken him weeks to figure out why his shirts kept vanishing and reappearing. They made more time to train together. May kept to a carefully randomized fitness routine, but Phil had enough of a sense of it by now to know when to stay up later so he could run with her when the tiny gym would be empty and May'd feel free to poke him when he ran slower than she felt like he should and he could watch the captivating bounce and sway of her ponytail.

They were sitting by his desk, her on top of it and his feet braced up by her hip the way they’d done a thousand times, but this time when she said goodnight she braced a hand on his chest and leaned down and kissed him, soft and lingering He'd blinked up at her afterwards, her lovely dark eyes and his lips tingling hot and hadn’t even managed to say goodnight back.

They’d used to study with her bent knees leaned across one of his legs, Ada or Russian or codes unique to Shield. The battered couch in his new office got more use these days, reports scattered around them and her knees folded warm on top of his left thigh. Sometimes now it turned into kissing, their shoulders turned into the cushions and her head rested back on his arm, mouths tasting of scotch. She’d slap his arm when she teased him again, cupped hand to make it loud. He hip-checked her shamelessly when she was pretending to refuse to spar with him for not being a challenge, for being boooring. The first time she clipped him with her shoulder on her way out, the way she’d used to because she was happy and she could and he was there, the way she hadn’t done in eight years Phil had honestly almost cried after his door closed.

He brushed the backs of his fingers under her jaw one morning and kissed her sweetly while she was glowering at the kettle waiting for tea. She turned her face away before she smiled, but that had never mattered.

He broke in to her room one afternoon and switched out her grey sheets for ones patterned brightly with Tetris. It had been a very long time for them since cups of paint balanced waiting in lockers and late night cosmetic alterations. Maybe too long. May hadn’t retaliated yet, which was making him more nervous by the day.

They hadn’t had sex yet.

Perhaps that was ironic, given they’d actually done _that_  part before and it was the making out thing that was new, but there hadn’t been a moment that felt right yet. Neither of them had made a move at least. They didn’t even sleep together all that often. Phil had always liked that part of things, even though he inevitably turned his back on his partner in his sleep. May had always been surprisingly cuddly if she was tired and comfortable. But May had always been an early morning kind of person and he kept terrible hours, had never quite unlearned that habit of late-night binges of work he’d learned back in college.

If he went up to see her in the Zephyr’s cockpit he kissed her cheek before he left. She woke him once with her lips soft behind his ear. Every single time it felt new all over again and somehow familiar.

If they did sleep in the same bed it was his. Phil simply did not _fit_ on May’s. She’d picked her room for the quiet, not the size, and the cozy space she’d contrived to sleep in did not fit two. They already knew how to sleep with each other, had since they’d crashed together still mostly drunk back when they’d been trainees, the way he would pull away in the night but could fall asleep on his back first, the way May would curl along his side with her knees bent, the way she was warm like a tiny space heater from her hummingbird’s metabolism. Her head was heavy on his shoulder, but not heavy enough to put his arm to sleep. She laid on his right side so he could pet her hair. With her next to him, the slowed reaction time with his only hand pinned down didn’t matter.

Weeks of goodnight kisses and tight hugs in the morning emptiness of the kitchen and fingers had crept under shirts, but never lower. When they shared his bed they both wore pajamas. Maybe she needed more time after essentially being widowed. Maybe he needed the same after losing it all so terribly suddenly the last time. Maybe it was something else. Age. The gravity. Something.

It’d been weeks and nothing felt like it was missing.

They were kissing under the sheets in his room, over-warm with May’s bodyheat and t-shirts and the still air but he couldn’t care less. Nothing mattered but her mouth on his in the dark, heads on the same pillow and lips plucking lushly at each other, slow licks inside, light nips with teeth. They lingered over it until their lips felt swollen, until it got hard to blink their eyes open, until they slowed and went still with a few soft presses of their closed mouths together.

May sighed. It didn’t make a sound, but he felt the air against his throat, the shift of her belly against his ribs as she breathed. He’d thickened a little inside his boxers with all the contact, the heat, but there was no impulse to do anything about it. He didn’t _want_ to do anything. He just wanted to feel it, wallow in the hot almost-tension of it all.

Phil shifted onto his back and May settled along his side, one knee atop his thigh and her arm light on his chest. Her damp hair was silky-cool against his shoulder. She’d showered before she’d let herself in tonight. “This is nice right? This is what we needed,” he said quietly.

“What kind of a question is that?” May replied after a moment, and he could tell she was already half asleep, but her arm stretched out across his chest, held on tight.

Phil smiled. The little gestures always said more than her words. He kissed the top of her head even though she’d usually growl at him for it, but May's fingers were clung around his ribs like she'd kill anything that tried to move her. “Works for me.”

Maybe the sort-of chasteness wasn’t about their past traumas or anything else lacking. Maybe this was just what the luxury of not having to frantically rush for once felt like, being able to take their time. It figured he wouldn’t recognize it when he actually had it. They’d settle into the rest of it when it felt right. They'd made it this far.

Usually May left to start her morning without waking him, but when Phil woke up at the usual time she was warm along his back, knees under his thighs and her forehead against the scar, sound asleep.

It felt so wonderful all over again, kissing her awake for the first time.

 

**Author's Note:**

> These two have one of the best relationships and I've enjoyed every incarnation of it that we've seen in the show - friends deciding not to pursue a crush, old friends relearning each other, best friends ready to start over. There is so much history between them and it's a beautiful story. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the read <3


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